Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawaii

Although little remains of Hawai`i’s plantation economy, the sugar industry’s past dominance has created the Hawai`i we see today. Many of the most pressing and controversial issues—urban and resort development, water rights, expansion of suburbs into agriculturally rich lands, pollution from herbicides, invasive species in native forests, an unsustainable economy—can be tied to Hawai`i’s industrial sugar history.

InSovereignSugar, Carol MacLennan unravels the tangled relationship between the sugar industry and Hawai`i’s cultural and natural landscapes. It is the first work to fully examine the complex tapestry of socioeconomic, political, and environmental forces that shaped sugar’s role in Hawai`i. While early Polynesian and European influences on island ecosystems started the process of biological change, plantation agriculture, with its voracious need for land and water, profoundly altered Hawai`i’s landscape.